Ground is shifting beneath Sudan’s longtime leaders

After leading Africa’s largest country for nearly 18 years, is Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir ready to step down?

That’s the question some in Khartoum, the capital, are asking after Bashir’s surprising public comments this year that the Sudanese people are impatient for leadership change and that he had no desire to run in the next election.

Critics dismissed Bashir’s comments as political gamesmanship or false humility. Others said the former army general, 63, is looking for a graceful way out.

Either way, Sudanese politicians and analysts say Bashir’s curious remarks only underscore the increasingly unpredictable political landscape likely to characterize Sudan in coming years.

“We’re in a very fluid state right now,” said Mariam Sadiq Mahdi, an opposition leader and daughter of a former prime minister.

Amid mounting international pressure over the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region and political discontent at home, Bashir and his ruling National Congress Party are facing strong new challenges to their authority, political analysts and opposition leaders say.

“He is much weaker,” said prominent Islamist leader Hassan Turabi, a onetime ally of Bashir. Turabi, who spent most of his career either at the top echelon of Sudanese politics or jailed as a “traitor,” has witnessed and orchestrated his share of coups and uprisings. He said the time is ripe again.

Turabi is attempting to unify the major opposition parties against Bashir and recently called for massive anti-government protests, saying public frustration with the current regime is at an all-time high.

Coup rumors have been buzzing around Khartoum for months with claims that disaffected members of the ruling party are plotting to push Bashir aside.

External pressures on the regime also are growing. Sudan is the target of U.S. economic sanctions because of the mass killings and displacements in Darfur, which officials in Washington have labeled a genocide. Britain and Germany are threatening to follow suit.

More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2 million have been displaced since a rebellion that began in 2003. The government is accused of responding to the uprising by arming Arab militias, known as janjaweed, to attack civilian populations and rival non-Arab tribes.

At the same time, Bashir’s tenuous political alliance with former southern rebels in the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement is unraveling. SPLM leaders are voicing dissatisfaction with a unity government created under a 2005 north-south peace deal that ended a 21-year civil war between the Muslim government in Khartoum and mostly Christian and animist rebels in the south.

In February, the SPLM moved its headquarters to Khartoum in an attempt to establish itself as a new power broker in the capital. The party is hinting that it may run against the ruling party in the next presidential election, scheduled for early 2009.

Supporters of Bashir, who declined to be interviewed, insisted that he remains strong and popular. They accused opposition leaders of exaggerating the ruling party’s problems.

“No one is opposing the president,” said one government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But opposition leader Sadiq Mahdi predicted that the ruling party would feel pressured either to accept modest democratic reforms or crack down on opponents.

“There are two roads,” she said. “Either they open up to reforms and relieve some of the pressure, which risks losing some power, or they continue to resist, which would mean more fracturing. If that happens, we are talking about a total collapse.”

Bashir’s party, led by a clique of fewer than a dozen top officials, appears to be split over its next move, analysts say.

“They are more divided now than ever before, and no one really knows who is on whose side,” said Adam Azzain Mohammed, head of the University of Khartoum’s Institute for the Studies of Public Administration and Federal Governance.

The National Congress Party had garnered support countrywide under a banner of Islamist ideals, but in recent years it has failed to articulate a clear agenda, and its influence and popularity are limited chiefly to the capital, experts say.

“The whole regime is disintegrating,” said Mubarak Mahdi, a former member of parliament who leads the Reform and Renewal Party, a new opposition party.

Analysts say the ruling party is split into at least two camps: those favoring modest democratic reforms and a rapprochement with the international community, and a hard-line faction that is worried that concessions might make it appear weak.

Some see Ali Osman Taha, a former Turabi protege who serves as second vice president, as leading the reformist faction against Bashir. Taha once was seen as the power behind Bashir, but in recent months he has been sidelined.

Hard-liners blamed him for giving too much to southern rebels in the 2005 peace agreement, such as awarding plum government jobs to the SPLM, agreeing to share oil revenue and granting southerners a chance to secede in 2011.

Bashir’s support lies mainly with the hard-liners, particularly the military. But he is viewed as increasingly isolated, analysts said.

“Bashir is playing the factions against one another,” said Safwat D. Fanous, head of the University of Khartoum’s political science department.

The death of SPLM leader John Garang in a 2005 helicopter crash removed the man many considered Bashir’s toughest potential challenger in a presidential race. The charismatic Garang hoped to unify Sudan’s marginalized populations, including rebels in Darfur and the east, into an opposition coalition.

His replacement, Salva Kiir, has so far proved a less dynamic politician. But analysts say the SPLM remains a likely kingmaker in the election.

“The wild card is the SPLM and where it will throw its weight,” Fanous said.

If the SPLM decided to continue its partnership with the ruling party, Bashir probably could win another term. But in recent months, Kiir and other SPLM leaders have asserted independence. Relocating the party headquarters to the capital was designed to give southerners a stronger national presence.

Kiir also has expressed an interest in getting more involved in Darfur. After largely ignoring the crisis for the last year, Kiir announced plans to visit the region and has publicly split with Bashir over the president’s opposition to allowing United Nations peacekeepers.

Relations between Bashir and Kiir took a turn for the worse in January during a celebration marking the second anniversary of the peace deal. Kiir publicly chastised Bashir for failing to implement key provisions, including resolution of the border dispute over the oil-rich Abyei region.

A visibly irritated Bashir lashed back, accusing the SPLM of mismanaging $60 million he said he gave to Garang for implementation of the peace deal.

Analysts say power struggles and conflicting visions in Khartoum are complicating efforts to resolve the standoff in Darfur.

Bashir appears to be the driving force behind the government’s policy, but he has given mixed signals on some issues, such as allowing U.N. peacekeepers or supporting a Darfur peace agreement.

Some suspect the wavering is a symptom of disunity between party members who want political compromise and those preferring a military solution.

“Darfur is a clear example of the ineffectiveness of the government,” said Eltayeb Hag Ateya, head of the Peace Studies Institute at the University of Khartoum. “There’s a lack of direction and objectives. Bashir can’t fix it, but it’s not just lack of will. It’s out of sheer weakness.”

edmund.sanders@latimes.com